The use of gender quotas to achieve equal opportunity is a controversial political strategy, but one that seems to be achieving positive results in India. A new research paper co-authored by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Rohini Pande finds that the system designating female leaders for selected village councils in India has resulted in substantive gains for girls in those villages — both in terms of aspirations and educational outcomes.

In their research the authors analyzed data gleaned from more than 8,000 surveys of adolescents and their parents in almost 500 villages, a third of which were randomly selected to reserve a seat for a female leader, called a “Pradhan,” on the village council. The data showed that “compared to villages that were never reserved, the gender gap in aspirations closed by 25 percent in parents and 32 percent in adolescents in villages assigned to a female leader for two election cycles.”

The authors also conclude that girls raised in villages with a female Pradhan were more likely to score higher in school exams than girls from other villages, while test scores for boys remained roughly the same.

“These results show that laws can help create role models by opening opportunities that were previously unavailable to a group, and this increased opportunity does not diminish the aspirations of those outside the group,” the authors argue. “Our study shows that, in the Indian context, the positive effect of exposure to a female leader dominated any possible backlash, probably because it gave women a chance to demonstrate that they are capable leaders. And, perhaps most importantly, our study establishes that the role model effect reaches beyond the realm of aspirations into the concrete, with real educational and time-use impacts.”

Good information. The data showed that “compared to villages that were never reserved, the gender gap in aspirations closed by 25 percent in parents and 32 percent in adolescents in villages assigned to a female leader for two election cycles.